Labels and pigs

In the wake of the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, stories are popping up all over that Hezbollah, Iran and the New York Times have loudly been trumpeting a Hezbollah victory. Others say the opposite is true. And even I, while I don’t think Hezbollah won, don’t think Israel won other, something that may be an inherent problem in asymmetrical warfare. As someone said (Dennis Prager?) this is not the type of war that will end with the defeated party boarding the U.S.S. Nimitz and signing a formal surrender.

But, as usual, I’m digressing wildly. One of the MSM’s assumptions, and one driving so many of its stories and analyses, is that it believes that, because Hezbollah declared victory, it must indeed be the victor. And all I can think of is a line from a Texas district court decision:

But at the end of the day, even if you put a calico dress on it and call it Florence, a pig is still a pig.

By the way, the whole Bradshaw decision is pretty damn funny. Even if you’re not a lawyer and don’t follow the maritime legalize, you might want to take a few minutes to read the decision. I’ve known many crayon writing lawyers myself over the years.

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I think this analysis of the outcome of the Lebanon war makes some sense. I am not thrilled with the cease-fire deal, but I have a hard time swallowing the conclusion that this was a “complete defeat for Israel”.

Given the reach and bias of the media, I doubt that any outcome would have been perceived as an Israeli victory by most. If there is a government with more imagination, judgment and testosterone, this cease-fire deal may turn out OK. Hezbollah isn’t going to keep it, and open violations will justify continued military action – which must be swift, unexpected, and decisive.

I guess my only worry is that with today’s weapons – much smaller, a good deal cheaper, and supplied by a rich and committed country – it may not be possible to win in the way that we have become accustomed to. Hence, the need for imagination and vigor.

jg

American Thinker links to pictures which define the conflict. Sometimes a picture is worth a ton of MSM lies.
Here are more than one.

It is too early to offer a intelligent analysis of who won, or so I happen to believe.

erp

off/t

BW – This new blog format doesn’t seem to date your posts, although it does date comments. It’s really convenient to know which are the newest posts. In other words, some of us can’t remember anything for beans and we need guideposts.

Thanks.

Back on/t

The fallout from this recent “war” won’t be known for a while and the straight poop won’t come from the media. Media are mired deep in their own poop and I don’t see them emerging anytime soon.

Danny Lemieux

Book, this is interesting and, if true, puts a whole new perspective on what has been happening in Iraq. It certainly supports the U.S. military’s historic 10:1 to 20:1 kill ratio in modern warfare, but I am curious why the U.S. has not publicized its effectiveness in killing enemies, not civilians. http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23950

Vietnam, Danny. Also Bush. Joint Chiefs. They are of the Vietnam generation after all, it make sense. They don’t want to repeat past mistakes. But that’s like trying to avoid a prophecy, you will just make it self-fullfilling.

The US has no propaganda apparatus. We did before, but there is no office, program, or CO in the Pentagon slated to conduct domestic OR foreign propaganda using military resources. The most you have the military newspapers, military reporters, and the defunct incompetent limited PR branch of the Army.

The left-oriented media has staged an obvious “morale” war on Americans, and to some degree it has succeeded; and it has been made worse by the refusal of the Bush Administration (thanks to the Vietnam experience) to tout any enemy casualties as indicators of progress, when in fact they are, in most cases, the very best indicators.

I just read that part now, so I guess I agree with it since I already wrote much the same even before reading it.

Everybody in the chain of command refuses to publicize body counts. For a various number of reasons, those reasons connected to Vietnam. For Bush, I think, it isn’t so much about bad Vietnam experiences, so much as honoring the fallen. He doesn’t want to make it seem like one fallen soldier was worth it for 500 dead enemies, since he meets with the families. So he tries to avoid it in his mind.

One of the difficulties that the UN and other “objective” observers have had is distinguishing civilians from terrorists. If the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count is anywhere near accurate, however, and some 2,800 “non-civilian” bodies were in Iraq morgues in June, then in fact some 93 terrorists/“insurgents” per day were being removed from the battlefield, or, since March 2003, it means well over 100,000 non-civilians have been killed by coalition forces since the beginning of combat—perhaps upwards of 120,000. To be safe, using UN/New York Times numbers, we arrive at 75 terrorists/“insurgents” per day, or 36,000 dead enemy fighters since combat began

That doesn’t even count the ones in GitMo and jail.

Does anyone think the terrorists are experiencing that level of medical success with their wounded?

They are if they are captured by Americans while wounded, and treated by American doctors and with American paid for medicine while children burned from IEDs don’t get American military treatment because they are not “casualties” of either America’s side or the enemy’s side. Nice loophole. Bush doesn’t do anything about it. Either he doesn’t care or it is beneath his notice.

I do care, and that’s why I know that it is one reason why the body counts almost do not matter. You have to break the will of the enemy to fight, and bolster your own force’s morale at the same time. Killing them is just one method. Killing them and then treating them for wounds is not actually breaking their will to fight. If it was normal people, not Islamic Jihad, then it would help. But against terroists? I think not. Help them, and they’ll just come back and kill more children.

FrontPage probably didn’t look into psychological warfare so they can be excused for not noticing that facet in the body counts.

In America’s Victories, I argued that Iraq was a giant “Roach Motel,” in which the terrorists check in, and only leave via the morgue.

Effective since Bush isn’t going to use his almost godlike political powers to kill terrorists himself through the strategic weapons of the US. So he has to rely upon the military to do it for him, one by one. Bush keeps terroists alive in gitMo and prisons, the Marines kill the terroists before they captured. I suppose it works, to a degree.

Zarqawi’s last memos testify to the effectiveness of this strategy, as does his corpse.

Indeed. Bush can’t do ruthless executions and won’t, so he gets someone else to do his dirty work. It’s what rulers have done for awhile now, and is one of the foundations upon which Bush bases his leadership style. It is one of delegation. Bush won’t do it himself, he’ll just let people he delegates do it for him. When he counts on the State Department, this ends in disaster, as well as when he counted upon the CIA. But when he counts upon the Marines to do a job? You can bet your arse that that job will get done, and that corpses will be piled upon each other up to the sky at day’s end.

jg

Re Post 8 from D.L.: Most illuminating reading. Please comment if you find other writers researching this question.

I doubt any of us take time to count all the different lies the Left has thrown against the war (it may match the number of enemy dead?). ONe lie was certainly the slam “Iraq is a training/breeding ground for the next generation of terrorists.” Your article seems to indicate the opposite. It’s proving a killing ground.

Not knowing the MSM,I wonder if the question of where the terrorists are coming from is ever honestly researched. Might the quiescence recently of Al Qaeda result from the manpower/weapons drain of the Iraq conflict?

Likewise (you are better at this, Danny), it seems that the ongoing conflict gives interested Western powers a chance to observe who is fishing in the trouble waters. All the jihadist terror group family, sure. But what nations: Iran, of course, but Russia, Pakistan, China, N. Korea? Not directly connected in all cases, but still maybe part of the weapon/supplies web that keeps the Iraq terror machine running.

Very worthwhile info, I would think, for those who have the Bush doctrine in the safe, and need to know for future purposes which nations choose the terror game. The more players you identify and casefile, the better for our future strategy.

Iraq isn’t specifically a training ground because training grounds are locations where terrorists are trained under a program. It is a lie to claim that, when they attempt to insinuate that it is a training ground because terroists gaining experience is a teritiary effect of the Iraq battleground.

Gaining experience and being trained is not a primary component in Iraq, that is why it is a lie to claim it directly. In a war, learning and experience is a secondary and tertiary effect. It is not the primary goal, the primary goal is to win, learning is just a means to an end.

Terrorists have to go to Iraq and the smartest leave alive to fight in Afghanistan and otherwhere. But they leave behind a lot of dead bodies that failed, not only failed in keeping alive but also failed in disrupting US operations in Iraq.

All wars are training grounds for the opposing armies. But unlike a real training ground, the consequences for mistake are permanent and non-retractable. By not mentioning the training effects on the US Army, by insinuating that the US Army is stretched and broken by Iraq while terrorists are learning by dying in Iraq, it constructs a deceit based upon a thread of truth. The best deception and lies are based upon a thread of truth, weaving a web of unreality.

The Democrats know some of the arts of deception and reality bending, but as you can see with Hizbollah and Qana, that the Arabs and Persians easily beat the Democrats at this little game of intrigue.

Don Quixote

Kathryn, the case is real. And great reading. Sometimes judges have just had enough and let loose (which is a lot fun for everyone but the target).

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